They use style and fashion to explore their identities and challenge rigid boundaries between male and female.

They are hardly alone in subverting norms. Boy George and David Bowie are among them, as are Adam Lambert, Annie Lennox and Prince. Even mainstream media and high-end fashion magazines embrace androgyny or gender-benders.

Think of the brand MAC Cosmetics that hired Drag Queen Ru-Paul and Alberta cow-punk lesbian star k.d. lang to hype its products in the 1990s. Not only are boyish female models with no breasts or hips all the rage, but Elliott Sailors, a 31-year-old former beauty pageant contestant living in New York, actually cut off her blond locks in 2012, bound her breasts and began modelling menswear. Sailors is now often mistaken as the same-sex partner of her husband.

Blurring the man-versus-woman binary through style choices isn’t always easy, but as Rabbit, Jans and Lauren say, expressing themselves any other way wouldn’t be true to themselves.

Chevi Rabbit

Identifies as: feminine man, or androgynous creature

Style choice: posh and chic, not bubble gum or clowny

Preferences: matte looks rather than patent leathers

Bare-chested men are all over social media, showing off their pecs and abs in masculine glory.

But when Chevi Rabbit posted a glamorous photo of himself revealing his nipples in a strapless corset, Facebook and Instagram blocked him for seven days.

“Don’t share photos that show nudity or adult content,” read the form letter Rabbit received.

Social media sites, after all, aren’t able to decipher the subtleties along the gender spectrum.

Rabbit self-identifies as a man, but as a feminine man who adores makeup — he’s a makeup artist, after all — nude fingernail polish and blouses that drape beautifully over his broad shoulders.

He is not transgendered: a woman born in a man’s body who undergoes hormone therapy or gender reassignment surgery so that the outer display of gender matches the inner.

In no way does Rabbit want to be a woman. Instead, he expresses himself with a mesmerizing mix of feminine and masculine clothing.

Rabbit pairs high-waisted disco pants from American Apparel — “I have every colour. I have red. I have purple, I have pink” — with one-piece bathing suits that serve as form-fitting garments under sheer blouses.

“When it comes to the fashion world, I have the freedom to do what I want so I wear high heels,” Rabbit said. He leaves the heels and the skirts at home while working with professional makeup clients.

“They want that fabulous gay guy they see on Real Housewives, the one with tailored suits, thin pants, tailored blazers, maybe some pink, the cliched stuff,” said Rabbit, 27. “I like that look and it’s good, because I wouldn’t want my clients to feel uncomfortable.”

But his fashion preference has always leaned toward the feminine, starting in childhood when he slipped into his sisters’ dresses and mother’s heels.

“Everybody knew I was gay before I knew I was gay,” Rabbit said. When he formally came out at age 12, his mother simply said, “I love you and you’re happy. What do you want for supper?”

Rabbit went out to play.

“I’m not a masculine man, nor would I be comfortable being put in that category,” he explains. “But I wouldn’t be a woman either because I don’t identify being fully as a woman. I identify myself as a feminine man that likes to do creative expression who just happens to be more feminine.”

Nude spanx give him curvy hips for when he chooses pencil skirts. But he doesn’t want padded bras.

“I just like it flat because there’s that Liverpool, European androgyny (thing). I love that look.”

Yet Rabbit subconsciously toned down his own “very flamboyant and very feminine” style after July 2012 when he was attacked by three men as he was walking to the Safeway store in the Garneau area. The men pulled up in their vehicle, yelled homophobic slurs at him before putting Rabbit in a headlock and throwing him to the ground. Police investigated it as a hate crime, but no one was ever charged.

Rabbit was vocal and launched an anti-hate rally, but friends soon noticed the young man started to wear less makeup. Blazers became the norm.

“It kind of made me upset because I got derailed because of someone else’s insecurity,” said Rabbit, whose counsellor helped him work through his fear and anxiety. “I kind of feel bad I’m not living up to what I used to, in terms of fashion. I feel I could get back there.”

This spring, he has plans to get hair extensions and bangs to accent his cheek bones.

“I don’t want to look like the standard woman or the standard man. I want to look almost genderless but done in a way that looks fashionable,” he said.

Terah Jans and Beni Lauren

Identify as: gay women, lesbians, gender neutral, androgynous

Style choice: hipster-guy and classic butch lesbian

Preferences: men’s clothing, plain colours

Terah Jans and Beni Lauren don’t often think of themselves as women.

They prefer gender-neutral pronouns such as “they” or “them” or better yet, xe and xer, terms often used on university campuses where students are exposed to gender studies and a broad array of lifestyles.

“I don’t think of myself as a female, unless I go swimming and then I have to think of that kind of stuff,” says Jans, a 34-year-old in communications for the University of Alberta’s fine arts program.

She describes her style as a cross between “hipster-guy and classic butch lesbian,” or “dangling in purgatory between femme and butch.

“Stereotypically, I do wear a fair bit of plaid,” Jans jokes. “I usually try to downplay most of my feminine features and choose clothes that give me more of a straight, rather than curvy, silhouette.”

Since coming out as gay about eight years ago, Jans has rid her closet of the feminine items left over from her time with long hair and a heterosexual marriage. She now buys clothing from the men’s section in H & M and Zara’s or hits Mark’s Work Wearhouse.

Dressing butch or androgynously comes with challenges, even dangers. A car full of men once driving by Jans were confused by her close-cropped boys’ haircut, cargo pants and longboard. Jans sometimes wears coverup and bronzer on her face.

The men yelled homophobic slurs and scared Jans.

Lauren, 24, says she gets probing stares while in St. Albert on her way to work at an organization helping people with disabilities called Transitions.

“It doesn’t bother me because I think the more they see that, the more aware they’re going to be that it exists and they’re going to become less in a bubble,” Lauren says. She likes plain button-ups, cardigans and ties — many of which she inherits from her gay male friends — and a touch of mascara.

“I’ve been all over the place on the identity spectrum, but I identify as a gay woman,” she says. “(But) I don’t feel like I identify strongly with the woman identity because society has women so different than how I look and how I feel, but that’s the binary that I’ve been put into.”

That binary provides comfort in a world that doesn’t like uncertainty.

Lauren and Jans’s style blurs that easy line.

“I think (style is) important,” Lauren says. “If I woke up tomorrow morning and put on something super girly and went to work, I wouldn’t feel like myself. I would feel like I’m lying to myself and the people around me. How I dress represents who I am.”

When Jans is feeling particularly confident, she’ll get cheeky and go to rural weddings in a tie and suit jacket, accompanied by her very feminine partner, Janelle Aker, who loves skirts, high heels and eyelashes.

That style choice also has consequences.

“Sometimes she feels the opposite (of me): she feels unrecognized sometimes by the gay community,” Jans says, describing the term “femme invisibility.”

“Femme lesbians also get looked at by other lesbians like we don’t belong, and straight people don’t believe we’re gay,” wrote Megan Evans, a blogger on gay rights issues for Huffington Post. “Don’t get me started on the hassle I get from straight males, who often say things to me like, ‘But you’re too pretty to be gay,’ or, ‘Who wears the trousers?’”

Yet Jans and Aker embrace their style.

“Sometimes it’s fun, catching people’s stares. And most people are just curious,” Jans says. “Our society sometimes gives us two options, so sometimes dressing like this is a political statement. But when I get up in the morning, I’m not thinking ‘political statement.’”

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